April 1; 360 Degree Management
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

Chapter Four: Relationships; 1 April

Do not forsake your friend and the friend of your father…

Proverbs 27:10a

Network

“You should always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t come to yours,” Lawrence Peter Berra.

The great Yogi Berra is said to be the best catcher in baseball history. The Hall of Famer played almost two decades for the New York Yankees. He is known as a manager who mangled quotes–which seem to best represent the imperfect network of relationships that is management.

The catcher on a baseball team is traditionally perceived as the most intelligent player on the field—who gets things done.

He loved the game (the winning) and loved people (who did the winning). He understood the subtle movement and magnetism of how people behaved like family on the molecular level. Managers understand these relationships and how to get people to get things done.

Management is done through the thinking support of others. Management described in one word would be “relationships.”

Amateur managers think that the work of the manager, that plan-organize-lead-control, is what is done ‘to’ subordinates beneath them on the org chart. The novice leader thinks that 100% of his effectiveness depends on getting his direct reports to work.

This is, of course, wrong. To ‘control events’ the manager needs to control more than the workings of his staff. Where does the new manager begin?

He can start with some new business math.

The manager’s world has four bodies in his orbit. His boss and his staff above and below on the vertical; his external peers and internal peers on the horizontal. They each have to be maintained in balance.

If we simply allocated equal time to each group of relationships in each of the four quadrants we would see 25 percent of the manager’s time working with his internal peers; 25 percent of his time nurturing relationships with his peers outside the company; 25 percent with his boss’s office and the remaining quarter with his staff.

Most of the manager’s time should be invested not with his people but apart from his direct reports.

Thomas J. Watson, the senior, chairman and CEO of International Business Machines, IBM said, “A manager is an assistant to his men.” To be an effective staff assistant the professional, seasoned manager knows that his people don’t need a ‘hands-on’ assistant handing them tools. The staff has needs that only the manager can provide.

I once asked a Commanding General his greatest challenge in running a large organization. He said, “to put resources where my people need them — or me…My office is BWI Airport,” where he would travel to get what his people needed.

The experienced manager knows office politics and movement of political capital and the extended relationships that govern them. Do not forsake your friend and the friend of your father…Proverbs 27:10a

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